We entered Guatemala through Melchor de Mencos and the paper work was mostly
the same – stamp passports and fill out the docs for the Temporary Import of our vehicles – yes in the plural – because que have a byke in the back and we had to pay and fill out papers for the bike, too. And before all that we had to have
our vehicle sprayed with insecticide…

Well, Guatemala, as it is true for most countries in Central America has much influence from the Mayas.The official name of the country is Republica de Guatemala and its indigenous correspondent is
= Quauhtlemallan – which means place with many trees…and what called my attention here was exactly the amount of green you see, with lots and lots of trees, even at the side of the roads and highways and many times overhanging the highway forming
what we call in Brazil a “green tunnel”. Here one can find gorgeous rivers – Rio Dulce is one example – beautiful lakes like Lake Izabal, mountain ranges and volcanoes. On our route south we went through beautiful landscape going around
some mountais before getting to Guatemala City.

The official language here is Spanish but other 21 different Mayan languages are also spoken and also the xinca and garifuna (African influence). Here at Guatemala City – which is the capital
nowadays – one can find most of the American brands like McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell, Dunkin Donuts Lowes, Wal-Mart, Office Depot …and many words and expressions are in English, too like “car wash”, “for sale”,
“pre-school”…

There is also the Antigua Guatemala or the Ciudad Vieja )Old Town) which was the first capital of Centro America and which has much History related to this country and its capital city. Unfortunately is was quite out
of our route so we didn’t visit it. From here we start traveling the Panamericana Highway down south.

We had to go through the present capital – Ciudad de Guatemala – which is, as is any other big city, a chaos as far as traffic is
concerned, and a big mess downtown with all the cars, trucks, Moto taxis and “chicken buses”…as they are called and which do carry “anything”! Check out the photos

At least the roads we have travelled so far qre quite
good and the persons we got in touch with were very educated and friendly. We had to ask for directions several times, even to the local police, and they even escorted us up to the correct road we had to take…

Yesterday we stayed overnight at
a Texaco Gas station – Gasolinera San Miguel – in the town of Poptun – in the Peten province - where Mrs Melba Zepeda welcomed us and let us stay overnight providing us with water and electricity and even allowing me to use the computer
from her office. Everyone we talked to would say “welcome to Guatemala…”. It is very rewarding to hear that!

Right now we are staying overnight at a Shell gas station at a place called "Las Islas" where there are two restaurants,
a small marketplace and the gas station and they are all supposed to be open 24h, but...Tomorow we intend to cross to El Salvador.